updated 12:00 pm EDT, Thu October 28, 2010

LG phone sales drop 10pc in summer 2010

LG saw its profit fall apart today as its summer results were hurt by its weakness in phones. Its profit plunged 99 percent, down from $805.6 million a year ago to $6.7 million. The Korean company was dragged down by its mobile group, which had a record loss of $270 million. The company's total phone shipments also dropped, going down 10 percent from year to year at 28.4 million.

Officials from the company mostly blamed its weakness in smartphones. Along with falling sales, the average price of one of its phones declined over the period, hinting that more of its sales skewed towards basic designs.

CFO David Jung hoped for a bounce back in the fall with phones based on the Optimus One, such as the Optimus S for Sprint and Optimus T for T-Mobile. About three million could ship worldwide by the end of the year and would be helped by the first Windows Phone 7 devices, focusing on Optimus 7 family phones like the third-largest phone designer overall, but its decline is likely to widen the gap with Samsung, whose recent success with Android has kept it afloat. It also narrows the gap with far faster-moving companies like Apple and RIM that should now be among the top phone designers.